eeing men rush to the
fire, and just as I see 'the machine' round the corner of the street, am
startled out of my propriety, my dream, sleep, and all by the loud cry of
'Fish!'

"I start up desperately in my narrow bunk, bringing my cranium in violent
contact with a beam overhead, which has the effect of knocking me flat
down in my berth again. After recovering as much consciousness as is
necessary to appreciate my position, I roll out of bed, jerk savagely at
my boots, and snatching up my cap and pea-jacket, make a rush _at_ the
companion-way, _up_ which I manage to fall in my haste, and then spring
into the hold for a strike-barrel.

"And now the mainsail is up, the jib down, and the captain is throwing
bait. It is not yet quite light, but we hear other mainsails going up all
round us. A cool drizzle makes the morning unmistakably uncomfortable, and
we stand around half asleep, with our sore hands in our pockets, wishing
we were at home. The skipper, however, is holding his lines over the rail
with an air which clearly intimates that the slightest kind of a nibble
will be quite sufficient this morning to seal the doom of a mackerel.

"'There, by Jove!' the captain hauls back--'there, I told you so!
Skipper's got him--no--aha, captain, you haul back too savagely!'

"With the first movement of the captain's arm, indicating the presence of
fish, everybody rushes madly to the rail. Jigs are heard on all sides
plashing into the water, and eager hands and arms are stretched at their
full length over the side, feeling anxiously for a nibble.

"'Sh--hish--there's something just passed my fly--I felt him,' says an old
man standing alongside of me.

"'Yes, and I've got him,' triumphantly shouts out the next man on the
other side of him, hauling in as he speaks, a fine mackerel, and striking
him off into his barrel in the most approved style.

"Z-z-zip goes my line through and deep into my poor fingers, as a huge
mackerel rushes savagely away with what he finds not so great a prize as
he thought it was. I get confoundedly flurried, miss stroke half a dozen
times in hauling in as many fathoms of line, and at length succeed in
landing my first fish safely in my barrel, where he flounders away 'most
melodiously,' as my neighbor says.

"And now it is fairly daylight, and the rain, which has been threatening
all night, begins to pour down in right earnest. As the heavy drops patter
on the sea the fish begin to bite fast and f